Gun Prohibition Lobby ‘Spending Millions’ in Midterm Elections

Anti-gunners are reportedly spending millions of dollars to influence the midterm elections, according to the Washington Post. (Dave Workman)

The Washington Post is reporting that anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety “plans to spend $8 million to $10 million in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico” to influence the midterm elections, via its “Action Fund.”

That is not the full extent of expenditures by the gun prohibition group’s fund, either. So far in Washington State, the Action Fund has contributed $250,000 to the Initiative 1639 political campaign, and another $59,500 in-kind contribution, according to the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission.

The newspaper noted that these multi-million-dollar expenditures underscore “the extent to which gun control is shaping up to be an issue in the November midterm election.”

That much became evident earlier this summer when a sociology professor at Bryant University penned an Op-Ed for the Baltimore Sun that bluntly advised gun control proponents to vote for Democrats this fall.

“But the most important and serious action you can take, if you really want serious federal gun control successfully legislated, is to vote Democratic in 2018 and 2020,” counseled Gregg Lee Carter, who authored Gun Control in the United States: A Reference Handbook.

Conversely, he advised people who wish to protect their gun rights to vote Republican.

For whatever reason, many gun owners seem always to be behind the curve politically when it comes to who or what to vote for. For example, one concern among the grassroots activists now working against adoption of I-1639 in Washington is that large numbers of people contacted at gun shops or gun ranges seem oblivious about the measure, a 30-page document that covers a variety of subjects including raising the minimum age for purchasing a semiautomatic rifle to 21, mandatory training, registration with a fee (allegedly a sort of “poll tax,” say critics), consenting to allow release of one’s medical records to law enforcement, so-called “secure storage,” and designating all semi-auto rifles as “semiautomatic assault rifles.” That would include popular .22-caliber rimfire models.

Under Initiative 1639, both of these are “semiautomatic assault rifles.” (Dave Workman)

How did that happen? Seems pretty simple. Initiative crafters appear to have cut and pasted the federal definition of a semiautomatic rifle into the initiative, and simply inserted the word “assault.”

Anti-gunners are pulling out all the stops. Another Washington Post story, picked up by the San Jose Mercury News, reported that “Student organizers nationwide are planning to display chilling, life-size statues depicting a panicked student crouched under a school desk during a mass-shooting lockdown drill, part of an effort…to sway voters to support candidates who back gun-control measures.”

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About Dave Workman

Dave Workman is an award-winning career journalist with an expertise in firearms and the outdoors. He is the author of several books dealing with firearms politics. He has a degree in editorial journalism from the University of Washington and is a lifelong Washington resident.